Lifelong learning is about developing structures for continuing education that can fit the realities of professional life and help complete the knowledge that people acquire during their careers and renew or develop their existing knowledge.

Although lifelong learning is as a concept broadly supported and strongly recognised by universities, governments and the EU, it is still in the starting phase of actually being implemented. Lifelong learning is not yet organised sufficiently at most universities which can easily be explained when looking at their principle task and target groups.

In general universities are bound to their conventional business models focusing on research and innovation and educational programming in the BA/MA structure. This is the right strategy for the target group of traditional students. Entering the field of the lifelong learning-student means developing new strategies and business models and consequently entering a partly unknown area.
This explains for the bigger part the hesitation of most universities to take the next step in organising lifelong learning.

The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, initiated by MIT only some years ago and now expanding globally, enables its best products of universities to be made available to all capable of learning at the tertiary level, whether they have yet to enter higher education or  wish to continue their study beyond graduation. Bologna must embrace the core of traditional university-centred education and the far larger penumbra of university-generated learning opportunities, of which OER’s are one.